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Familiar Studies of Men & Books-Part9_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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weather on the moorland, he measures verses of farewell:-

"The bursting tears my heart declare;



Farewell the bonny banks of Ayr!"

But the great master dramatist had secretly another intention



for the piece; by the most violent and complicated solution,

in which death and birth and sudden fame all play a part as



interposing deities, the act-drop fell upon a scene of

transformation. Jean was brought to bed of twins, and, by an



amicable arrangement, the Burnses took the boy to bring up by

hand, while the girl remained with her mother. The success



of the book was immediate and emphatic; it put 20 pounds at

once into the author's purse; and he was encouraged upon all



hands to go to Edinburgh and push his success in a second and

larger edition. Third and last in these series of



interpositions, a letter came one day to Mossgiel Farm for

Robert. He went to the window to read it; a sudden change



came over his face, and he left the room without a word.

Years afterwards, when the story began to leak out, his



family understood that he had then learned the death of

Highland Mary. Except in a few poems and a few dry



indications purposely misleading as to date, Burns himself

made no reference to this passage of his life; it was an



adventure of which, for I think sufficient reasons, he

desired to bury the details. Of one thing we may be glad: in



after years he visited the poor girl's mother, and left her

with the impression that he was "a real warm-hearted chield."



Perhaps a month after he received this intelligence, he set

out for Edinburgh on a pony he had borrowed from a friend.



The town that winter was "agog with the ploughman" target="_blank" title="n.庄稼汉 =plowman">ploughman poet."

Robertson, Dugald Stewart, Blair, "Duchess Gordon and all the



gay world," were of his acquaintance. Such a revolution is

not to be found in literary history. He was now, it must be



remembered, twenty-seven years of age; he had fought since

his early boyhood an obstinate battle against poor soil, bad



seed, and inclement seasons, wading deep in Ayrshire mosses,

guiding the plough in the furrow wielding "the thresher's



weary flingin'-tree;" and his education, his diet, and his

pleasures, had been those of a Scotch countryman. Now he



stepped forth suddenly among the polite and learned. We can

see him as he then was, in his boots and buckskins, his blue



coat and waistcoatstriped with buff and blue, like a farmer

in his Sunday best; the heavy ploughman" target="_blank" title="n.庄稼汉 =plowman">ploughman's figure firmly



planted on its burly legs; his face full of sense and

shrewdness, and with a somewhat melancholy air of thought,



and his large dark eye "literally glowing" as he spoke. "I

never saw such another eye in a human head," says Walter



Scott, "though I have seen the most distinguished men of my

time." With men, whether they were lords or omnipotent



critics, his manner was plain, dignified, and free from

bashfulness or affectation. If he made a slip, he had the



social courage to pass on and refrain from explanation. He

was not embarrassed in this society, because he read and



judged the men; he could spy snobbery in a titled lord; and,

as for the critics, he dismissed their system in an epigram.



"These gentlemen," said he, "remind me of some spinsters in

my country who spin their thread so fine that it is neither



fit for weft nor woof." Ladies, on the other hand, surprised

him; he was scarcecommander of himself in their society; he



was disqualified by his acquired nature as a Don Juan; and

he, who had been so much at his ease with country lasses,



treated the town dames to an extreme of deference. One lady,

who met him at a ball, gave Chambers a speakingsketch of his






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